


when the lights go out

by flybbfly



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 15:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7469676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil wakes up gasping in a bed next to Andrew, unsure if in this lifetime they love or hate each other, are meant to murder or save, and Andrew rolls over and presses closer to Neil in his sleep. His armbands, some form of them omnipresent in every lifetime, are poking out from beneath a pillow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the lights go out

**Author's Note:**

> they die over and over again but they live at the end so? no major character death here? 
> 
> mentions of violence, none that are very graphic I think.

In one lifetime, Neil has his fingers wrapped tight around Andrew's throat and Andrew gives in, hazel eyes disdainful even when he's in the midst of being murdered, and Neil doesn't let go. 

In another, the situation is reversed. Neil is faster and stronger, and he runs and runs, but it isn't enough. In the end, Andrew simply outlasts Neil, a lion and a gazelle, and then he's on top of Neil with a knife pressed to his throat. 

Neil wakes up, gasping, in a bed next to Andrew, unsure if in this lifetime they love or hate each other, are meant to murder or save, and Andrew rolls over and presses closer to Neil in his sleep. His armbands, some form of them omnipresent in every lifetime, are poking out from beneath a pillow. 

Neil relaxes enough to fall back asleep.

*

He wakes up and he's drowning, a different Andrew pressing his head under the water. Neil struggles against him, forces his way back up.

“Aren't you bored of this yet?”

“Aren't you?”

*

It's raining and he and Andrew are on a roof somewhere, Andrew smoking, Neil pretending to, and then it clicks again, that innate urge to kill.

He forces it down. 

Andrew notices anyway, blinks at the shift in Neil's posture, a deer in the forest before a natural disaster. When he moves, it's to attack, but he doesn't execute either. 

“I want to kill you,” Andrew says. 

“Likewise,” Neil replies. 

The feeling passes.

*

Same lifetime, different day:

They're at a strawberry field, some insane idea Dan had, team bonding or whatever. Andrew's face is impassive, but the sun is beating down on it, harsh and hot. Neil imagines the pink it'll take on later, how ridiculous it'll look. 

“Don't tell Dan, but I hate this farming shit. Was _not_ made for it,” Nicky says, wiping his brow. His basket of berries is by far the smallest, but his are the nicest, the most red, the least rot. “What's funny?” 

“Nothing,” Neil says. 

“Bullshit,” Nicky says, but he doesn't press.

*

A different lifetime, earlier:

They're in Rome, the two of them and a lion, and Neil thinks, _survive_ , thinks, _run_. 

Around them, cheers. Shouts. Jeers. Neil can't tell if they're rooting for him or Andrew or the lion. 

Neil is faster than Andrew in every lifetime, but in this lifetime Andrew is stronger. 

Neil runs. Neil survives. Andrew, barely sparing Neil a glance, lets the lion take him.

*

“How many?”

“Who are you?”

“I asked you first,” Neil says. 

On the roof again. This time it's sunny, and Andrew, still sunburnt from strawberries, is sitting in the shade. 

“How many what?”

“How many times have you wanted to kill me?”

“I always want to kill you.”

“You know what I mean.”

Andrew doesn't look at him, and then he does. “Four.”

“Why didn't you?”

“You were right,” he says, and Neil knows he's thinking about that time in the Pacific. He can't remember details, not really—it was his last lifetime but it was a thousand years ago. These things, he's come to realize, aren't chronological. “I was bored.”

“What are you?” Neil says. 

“It's my turn to ask.”

“Then ask me something.”

“Who are you?”

Neil can remember half a dozen of his names, one or two of Andrew's, mostly only that magnetic draw he feels in every lifetime through his childhood until he finds whoever Andrew is this time. That's when he remembers who he is, what his purpose is this time. 

“I'm the person who's meant to kill you.” 

Except—he's already done that. A hundred times, a thousand, infinite. And he's still here, living again, and now he and Andrew have lived in the same space for months without making an attempt on each other's lives.

“Or something,” he adds. 

“You're slightly less stupid than I thought,” Andrew says. 

Neil hides a smile.

*

They're in the Amazon or what used to be the Amazon, the forest all torn down, air noxious, and Andrew says, “Why bother? Let's just wait.”

They die together that time. 

Not one of the lifetimes where they're meant to kill each other, then.

*

“You two are getting close,” Matt observes from his bunk when Neil comes in from the roof.

“Andrew doesn't get close,” Neil says, thinking of a hunter about to strike its prey but waiting, watching, evaluating. 

And then he thinks of a half-forgotten lion and Andrew not looking at him, Andrew distracting the lion while Neil got away. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“Oh?” Matt says, smiling like he knows, like he can possibly know the depth of what Neil's just figured out. 

“Oh,” Neil agrees. “I'm going for a run.”

*

In one lifetime they're Olympians running the marathon. In another they're old and arthritic. In both they poison each other: something stolen from a physician's stores in Greece; switching out the mushrooms at the nursing home dinner in Manchester.

*

Neil remembers something partway through an exy game, when he turns and makes eye contact with Andrew moments before getting attacked by the opposing team's defender.

“Who are you?” Andrew says again, cornering Neil in the showers after the game (fingers around the back of his neck, warm, Neil's hair still wet, an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach), and Neil says, “I wasn't meant to kill you in every lifetime.”

Andrew shakes his head.

“Irrelevant,” he says. “In this one, we're meant to kill each other.”

“Are we?” Neil says.

Andrew looks up into his eyes, searching, scanning. 

“Yes,” he says, and lets go.

*

“You're always running,” Andrew says, unexpectedly, and then shoves a sword into Neil's gut.

*

Neil has a black eye, and his mouth hasn't stopped bleeding since he took an elbow to the face, but they won and they're raucous on the bus, celebrating, and he feels it again.

Andrew is by himself in the back, the rest of the team gathered toward the front, even Aaron and Kevin, and they're all so wildly happy to be in the semifinals that it's hard to step away, even if some biological supernatural urge is propelling him forward.

He sits next to Andrew, who doesn't look away from the window at him.

“We've lived a lot of different lives,” Neil says. “But this is the only one I feel like I've enjoyed.”

Andrew's fist unclenches on his knee, palm up. Peeking out from beneath his sleeves are those ever-present black armbands. Neil reaches out, and Andrew doesn't stop him, so he runs a finger down Andrew's sleeve, feels the place where the blade is concealed.

If it were nearly any other lifetime, Neil would try and steal the blade, either to keep it away from Andrew for good or to use it to kill Andrew himself. This time, instead, he pushes Andrew's sleeve back down and reaches for Andrew's hand. 

“Yes or no?” he says, careful, and Andrew nods jerkily at the window. 

The urge to kill, Neil thinks, fingers interlaced with Andrew's, is much weaker than this.

*

In some lifetimes, Neil doesn't find Andrew, can never figure out if he's supposed to kill him or save him or be killed by him or be saved by him, wanders the earth awaiting his arrival and never finds him. Those lifetimes, he never fully remembers who he is or what he's meant to do, but he always feels it, that nagging emptiness, the sense of not being whole.

*

“Have you thought about what happens if we just—don't do it?”

They're on the roof again, Andrew smoking, Neil pretending to smoke. 

“Yes,” Andrew says.

“And?”

“And what?”

“What do you think will happen?”

“I think it will end.” 

Andrew's eyes flick to Neil's, only briefly, and it's dark enough that it might just be a trick of the light, but Neil thinks he's almost smiling.

*

In one lifetime, Neil finds Andrew in a home somewhere, medicated out of his mind, barely able to carry a conversation without getting distracted or falling asleep depending on the drug he's on. It's not one of the times he has the urge to kill, but he presses a pillow against Andrew's face anyway, waits for the movement to stop, for the machines to stop making noise.

 _Next time_ , he thinks, and he doesn't even know what it means, _next time I'll get him._

*

They're in the mountains for spring break, hiking, the exy season over but their exy team surrounding them, and Andrew pushes Neil behind a rock formation and shoves a blade up against his neck.

“I thought—” Neil says.

“I can control it,” Andrew says. “Can you?”

He moves away, presses the knife into Neil's hand, and waits.

The urge is there. The urge is always there now, sharp and biting but faded, weaker than it was before, when they'd just met, before—before Neil knew.

“Yes,” Neil says.

“Good.”

Andrew doesn't move at all for a moment, stares at Neil, waits.

Neil leans forward. 

“Yes or no?” he says.

“Yes,” Andrew says, and kisses him. 

More lifetimes come to Neil: shopping at a souk in Morocco, picking out spices, making eye contact with a vendor and realizing it's him, it's the person he's been searching for; something that must be in the future because neither of them look quite human but they certainly _feel_ human still, all that blood, all that heat, Andrew's body against his, narrower jaw than is normal in the 21st century but human all the same; running (why, he wonders absently, Andrew's teeth clashing against his painfully, is he always _running_ ) the Boston marathon while Andrew hands him orange slices, and they've known each other for a while in this lifetime, and at the finish line Andrew kisses him like it's normal, like it's what he's there for, and in this lifetime they have never wanted to kill each other; meeting at a university in France, Andrew's accent southern, Neil's Parisian; and that strawberry field, the sun, the way Andrew's sunburn peeled after and how absurd it looked and how he sprinkled sugar on his strawberries and ate them with a spoon.

“This can't be real,” Neil says, but Andrew says, “It is,” and kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> literally wrote this on the subway home from work yesterday instead of finishing my les mis wip OR working on my tfc quidditch fic (read a preview [here](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com/post/142953689128/lol-instead-of-finishing-my-big-bang-fic-or), scroll past the abandoned les mis teacher au)
> 
> title is a random line from "run away with me" by carly rae jepsen
> 
> let me know what you think? super conceptual stuff used to be my jam in like 2009 but I think I as a writer am too wordy for it now


End file.
